


on a cushion of vapor

by handschuhmaus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cuban Missile Crisis, Gen, Historical References, War with Grindelwald
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-06 14:40:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20508689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus





	on a cushion of vapor

On All Saints Day 1962, Tobias comes home from work promptly (let off minutes early because the boss was in a ...beneficent mood) and is greeted with the sight of his father-in-law embracing Eileen, as if for dear life, and their daughter on the knee of his mother-in-law, sitting at their kitchen table with graphite-smeared hands and a pad of paper.

"Someone die?" he asked, carefully casual about it.

"We--" Mr. or Lord or whatever it is Prince is choked up--in fact, the dim light coming from the streetlight outside the window tempts Tobias to think there are a few tears rolling down the man's face. "_didn't_ die."

Fancy that. The man didn't come to his own daughter's wedding (there were reasons for that, good ones at the time, but Tobias didn't know him, beyond recognizing his face, and didn't feel like giving any leeway to someone who couldn't be bothered associating with his own family) and now he comes around for having endangered his holler-than-thou life.

"They celebrate Thanksgiving across the Atlantic," says Eileen's mother, her words laced with soft German intonations. "It's a time of thanksgiving for the world."

Tobias digs the toe of his boot into the floorboards petulantly, like a child. They come round for some matter no one outside of magic could care about, with their exaggerated concerns about some rogue magician or something, but not for Severine (a family name, Eileen said) Mara's birthday, or Christmas, or anything like that? "Some magician threatening you?" he asks sarcastically, and with little sympathy.

"I would hardly call Premier Khrushchev a magician," Eileen's mother responds, giving him a rueful half-smile. 

Khrushchev--oh. Yes. The USSR and the Americans, had been all on the radio and the telly and the headlines. So far as he figured it, it wasn't much use worrying about being dead tomorrow. Certainly he couldn't do anything about it. It didn't matter to the presidents or premier so-and-sos that Tobias and a million people like him would greatly prefer not to die or experience radiation poisoning or something. So he hasn't paid it much mind. 

"Imminent death, mused Dovstoevsky, clarifies priorities astonishingly, hard as living them out might be," says Prince, loosening his grip on Eileen slightly to look towards Tobias.

Dovstoev--Eileen had once, glumly, given him a thin paper pamphlet, the same sort as the wartime dreck about cooking on rations and keeping a garden that his mother kept in her closet, and it said he could expect "wizards" to be "out of touch with culture" and "mired in history". He figured, if he figured anything, he ought to expect Eileen's people to talk like Shakespeare or something, and be out of their depth around modern accoutrements like, say, radios. (He didn't have an answer for how Eileen had learned to fit into modern life reasonably well, aside from upper-class cluelessness about chores, and part of him thought he should just be glad he, solidly working class, had actually caught the attention of a rich girl, rather than think about that.)

Tossing around references to Russians, who were nowadays the enemies, and Mrs. Prince sounding like a very genteel sort of Hun, the accent, but not the tones or the content, recognisable from the propaganda films of his earliest childhood (then again, it was the 1960s, now, and the little Tobias knew of her was not unappealing as a person), are not things he bargained for. His father-in-law probably _could_ do Shakespeare justice, but he sounds like the BBC broadcaster sent to Cambridge.

But he ignores the man's questioning gaze and instead looks down at the pad of paper. He'd known a boy who did charcoal and pencil drawings, and from that he expected the smudged hands to mean Mrs. Prince (Lady. whatever.) had been drawing. It isn't. Must be some magic scrawls instead, although he hasn't a clue what upside down triangle times E with an arrow atop and a fraction with funny looking d's appended to an arrow-topped B and a t should mean. Then there's a funny looking curly y at the top. Nothing he can make sense of, though.

"What are you doing?" he asks, acutely aware that he may not like the answer.

"Trying to suss out how magic works," she answers readily. "And why it tends to break technology. We know that it works--at a certain level, but how isn't clear."

He voices his earlier conclusion, "Those are magic notations, then."

"Oh. No, they are bits from Maxwell's equations. Describe how electricity--and magnetism--work. The curious thing is that it's light, too, and wizards have never had problems with optics, as such. There's also a faction, among the few of us who think about it--and I haven't much for some time, that it's just minor randomized telekinesis breaking things." He might understand most of those words, individually. As is, the composed sentences are practically meaningless.

He nonetheless tries to make a comment, mouth moving a little faster than brain, and it comes out: "I--what?"

"Her family has long been interested in science," Mr. Prince puts in. "And wizards have noted a tendency for technology to break down around them, but they tend to concern themselves so little with mechanics and the like that it's unclear whether that development coincides with the adoption of electrical devices or not. It might just be that magic can cause randomized damage to things."

That is... surprising enough he can't put words to a response, beyond accosting Eileen, who has stepped just away from her father, with "Your mother is a scientist." 

Eileen only agrees, while the woman in question looks up at her and Mara reaches for her grandmother's arm. "Of sorts, I suppose. She was too affected by the war and very nearly losing my uncle to do much when I was a child." 

"'By the war.'" He repeats it skeptically, can't help prodding at the matter. "I thought for sure you'd have some sort of shields or something, and it's not as if you lived in London to see the Blitz, is it?"

His mother-in-law gives him a solemn response, more than the flippant question probably deserved. "The answer to why wizards did next to nothing to stop Adolf Hitler is that he had a magical counterpart they were fighting, who for a long time acted to protect him and his Reich. Through my father's citizenship I am Swiss, but I lived and traveled throughout the German-speaking world as a child, and my family were some of the few wizards involved in both wars of that period. My maternal grandfather was killed by the Gestapo six months after he started helping the Underground. My brother and I, sometimes my husband, and their ex-fiancee mostly fought in the wizarding side of the war. It seemed the most helpful avenue--we didn't like what we knew they were doing, but we and practically everyone else didn't know all of it, the worst parts."

Her husband adds to that speech: "Well. Some wizards didn't care. And they mostly don't about the present events, as foolish as that is. I won't lie to you, Mr. Snape, there are certainly wizards who think it would be best to have the non-magical population kill each other off as much as possible. To me, and I think to Bella, that's little better than those atrocities."

"I'm Tobias, not Mr. Snape--to _you_" Tobias corrects, a bit awkwardly. What is he supposed to say? Their world lets women fight wars, and some of them think he should up and die? And what is he to make of "their ex-fiancee"--whose?!

There is an awkward silence, as if the Princes are also considering something opaque to him, until Eileen volunteers, "Well, er, I don't think the intention was to disrupt our dinner, but I'm sure we can figure something out--"

"We'll sent a note ahead next time," his father-in-law agrees. "Severine, Tobias, we shall see you again soon." And then he's kissing Eileen goodbye and there's a flurry of activity as Mara is given to Eileen, and Mrs. Prince collects her things, and they go out the door, leaving the house feeling oddly empty for its accustomed number of people.


End file.
